Free Republic

Happy International Workers Day, the perfect occasion to write about Bernie Sanders, an actual Socialist running for President. The jokes fairly assemble themselves, mostly along the lines of: Sanders is far from the first Socialist presidential candidate, he’s just the first to admit it. You may assemble your own snarky rejoinders as the cranky 73-year-old gears up a challenge to Ms. Inevitability, Hillary Clinton. But once the chuckles fade, it is worth noting that Sanders brings some wild cards to the table. None of them suggest strongly that he will be the nominee, but they do suggest that he could...

As one begins to dissect and find meaning in Hillary Clinton's campaign announcement video, Getting Started, once striking message is that she sends to parents whose kids are trapped in failing schools, move to a better area. While much of the video is merely a fluff piece designed to pander to every conceivable demographic her campaign can target in its 2 minutes and 18 seconds, there are a few striking observations, none as disturbing as her apparent solution for addressing the problems of under-performing public schools. After introducing us to a woman whose home-grown tomatoes are apparently "legendary" the Hillary campaign...

The ambush-prone mainstream media (MSM) has difficulty trapping Sen. Ted Cruz, not just because he is mentally agile and verbally adroit. He has truth and authenticity on his side, and it is much harder to trip up someone of that description. Media watchdog Newsbusters shares a litany of examples of MSM hosts doing their best to demean Cruz following the announcement of his presidential campaign. Let's just glance at a few of those. NBC's Matt Lauer, co-host of "Today," was first up to bat for team MSM. He said to Cruz, "Senator, you're a guy who's known for taking on...

Leading talk show host and best-selling author Mark Levin assailed Jeb Bush last night over the revelation that one of his top foreign policy advisers, James Baker, will keynote an anti-Israel conference this weekend. The annual conference of the activist group J Street features an array of anti-Israel speakers, including proponents of the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divest (BDS) movement, which seeks Israel’s destruction, and advocates for the terrorist group Hamas. Jeb Bush’s selection of Baker as a foreign policy adviser has sparked concern among conservatives and in the Jewish and pro-Israel communities. Baker is infamous for his hostility to Israel,...

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (March 19, 2015) — Jeb Bush is betting his political future these days on the hope that pragmatism will trump conservative hostility in 2016. Fresh off his first public tours of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the Republican White House prospect has settled on an early approach for dealing with skeptics on the right, casting himself as a practical but "principled conservative," particularly when explaining his immigration and education positions that put him at odds with the GOP's most conservative factions. Bush often wraps his philosophy in scathing criticism of President Barack Obama. But the former...

The controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails and her unconvincing press conference at the United Nations have gotten many Democrats and others thinking the unthinkable: Clinton may not be the Democrats' 2016 nominee for president. And it has many asking the question -- scary for Democrats -- of who else could be. It's not a strong field. Vice President Joe Biden is 72 and has low poll ratings. Elizabeth Warren inspires the Democratic left, but says she's not running -- perhaps for fear of exposure of her dubious claim, when seeking prestigious law school jobs, of Cherokee ancestry. Others are even...

In Soviet Russia for a period of four years a great terror overcame the communist party in what later became known as the great purge. It was the culmination of years of social engineering ending in the consolidation of Stalin’s brand of communism having ultimate power. We are seeing something very similar happening in the democrat party today. After six years of “change” the Chicago progressives want to consolidate their power for the 2016 run at the presidency.

At her first public event since voters learned that she used personal email to handle sensitive government business for four years, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton avoided any suggestion or shadow of the scandal, instead delivering a dress rehearsal campaign speech to an audience of pro-choice advocates. As for her long-deferred announcement about the 2016 presidential race, Clinton did no more than repeat old quips about the difficult question of whether to run for president, at one point asking: “I suppose it’s fair to say: don’t you someday want to see a woman president?”

Immigration reform is touchy for Republicans specifically, and Americans in general. A Quinnipiac poll from November found that 48 percent of all voters think undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the United States with a path to citizenship—down from 57 percent in 2013—while 35 percent of voters say the immigrants should be required to leave. That statistic, combined with a perceived electoral need to reach out to more Latino voters, has put many Republicans vying for the presidency in a sticky spot. The only thing all Republicans seem to be able to agree on is the need to...

Like it or not, the 2016 presidential race is now well under way. Republican candidates are flocking to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, while Hillary Clinton, in-between $200,000 speeches at universities, is reported to be in seclusion developing her economic policies. It's easy to get overwhelmed by minutiae, but sometimes a twist of events turns out to be important, even 12 months away from the first caucuses and primaries. And of course, always keep in mind that most minutiae turn out to be trivial. Amid all this, it's important to keep in mind changes in the broader political environment...

The 3.8 percent point margin by which President Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 clouds the challenge the Republicans face in 2016. Unless they are able to improve their standing by 5 to 6 points in the key electoral states, they cannot win. Romney got 206 electoral votes (carrying his closest state, North Carolina, by only 2.2 points). To add to this total, much less to bring it up to the 271 needed to win, Republicans must carry a number of states where they lost by five or more points in 2012.

Three of the most talked about potential GOP presidential candidates will appear together this weekend at a panel sponsored by the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, in this year's first forum of presidential hopefuls. At the group's winter meeting Sunday in Palm Springs, California, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will participate in a panel discussion on domestic economic issues, including health care and energy policy. ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl will moderate the discussion. {snip} The panel discussion will take place Sunday at 8:30 p.m. PT, and an ABCNews.com...

With Republicans in Congress split over the best approach to President Obama’s executive amnesty – and with many establishment Republicans splitting from grassroots Republicans on the issue of illegal immigration more generally – it’s clear that immigration will be a hot-button primary issue in 2016. That’s nothing new: Governor Rick Perry of Texas saw his campaign flounder not on his “oops” moment, but on his proclamation that those who didn’t back in-state tuition for illegal immigrants were heartless. But the base’s passion on the immigration issue has only escalated thanks to President Obama’s precipitous and illegal actions in failing to...

With a full year to go before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, the Republican Party 2016 Presidential field is taking shape and Dignitas News Service handicaps the futures odds for the nomination and VP slots. While the Democrats wait to see if anointed candidate Hillary (vacated hyphen) Clinton will indeed be their lone contender, the GOP field is shaping up to provide a true horse race in the quest to take the Oval Office. While not dismissing the possibility that an heretofore unknown, minor candidate may make their presence felt, we have limited the field to established and...

Enormity of importance of the 2016 elections A close friend of mine just recently asked me what I thought of the 2016 elections. Now, for anyone who knows me, the thought of trying to give my friend any kind of simple-minded answers, was, predictably a practical impossibility. Matter of fact, as far as I am concerned, this was as loaded a question as it had been posed to me ever before, as I thought then and still do now, that 2016 will, more likely than not, go down in the history books as [the] most critical presidential election ever in...

The Republican National Committee (RNC) wants to get ahead of Hillary Clinton’s potential campaign for president. Though the former first lady has yet to announce her candidacy, on Thursday the RNC released an anti-Hillary video. The “infomercial” was posted on poorhillaryclinton.com—a site paid for by the RNC, though “not authorized by any candidate or any candidate’s committee”—and bashes Clinton for her high speaker’s fees and list of demands.

For several weeks now, the mainstream Jurassic media has been up to their old psychological warfare tricks, and naturally, the Republican establishment is falling for it hard. They always do, and this includes “the architect,” Karl Rove. This time it’s the media’s attempt to get Jeb Bush the Republican nomination for President in 2016. Articles that fawn over Jeb, either from a formidability standpoint or in the vein that he’s a “reasonable” conservative are everywhere. There has also been a release of meaningless polls touting Jeb’s strength atop the potential Republican field. These have all surfaced from many of the...

It is truly amazing is how hostile the leadership of the Republican Party is to the people who actually make up the Republican Party. I can tell you first hand that the establishment GOP types dislike the libertarian/conservative coalition aka The Tea Party at least as much as the Democrats do. Probably more. Why? Because the libertarian/conservative coalition is a real threat to their power. Do you honestly think that the GOP as it is currently constituted wants to reduce the size of government? Not a chance. A d this is why the party has been moving since 2012 to...

Election 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush embraces one-size-fits-all national education standards that would turn schools into re-education camps for the left. His decision could cause trouble with GOP primary voters. As is the tradition these days, Jeb Bush, brother of one former president and son of another, has announced via social media that he is preparing to run for president, setting the stage for another Bush-Clinton contest in 2016 should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton get the Democratic nomination. To be the Republican nominee, Bush must run a gauntlet of primaries where he'll need to persuade Tea Party...

Fox News reports:Graham thinking about presidential bid http://fxn.ws/1BUZ2XFWhich Graham? I mean, it couldn’t be Lindsey Graham, the senior U.S. Senator from South Carolina, in Congress from 1995 to 2003 and in the Senate ever since. There’s no market for a moderate Republican whose main passion is foreign interventionism, right? And yet, that’s exactly what the story says. Here are six other Grahams you’d probably rather see run for the highest office in the land before Lindsey Graham. Heather Graham:? She was great as Rollergirl in Boogie Nights but also as Daisy in the satire Bowfinger. She’s a children’s rights activist...